Earlier this week I listed some of the highlights of the year here at HU. So I thought here I’d list some of my favorite pieces from this year that were written for places other than the blog. They’re in no particular order.
On why James Baldwin’s essay The Devil Finds Work is the best piece of film criticism ever.
On Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol and superheroes against fascism.
On Eliot Rodgers, virginity, and masculinity. This was maybe the most popular thing I wrote this year.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, one of my favorite contemporary writers, talked to me about hick hop and race in country music.
I interviewed Feminista Jones about black women and street harassment.
On “Kiss Me, Stupid” and fantasizing about infidelity.
On Bella as a superhero and love as a superpower.
On my Nemesis, Jill Lepore (and being scooped on my Wonder Woman book.)
On how people have difficulty separating film and reality.
On the intersecting stigma towards black women and sex workers.
On why Dead Poets’ Society is an authoritarian blight.
On the one thing every writer needs to succeed.
On fetishizing the male gaze in the videos of Nicki Minaj and Lana Del Rey.
On the greatest male country singer.
On superheroes with disabilities.
On how Octavia Butler reworks Gone With the Wind.
On gay manga and fetishizing the male body.
On how the U.S. manufactures Muslim terrorists.
Just read the Lefty Frizzell piece for the first time and loved it, Noah. I’ll share it with some family members back home.